


Far Out to Sea and Alone

by traincar



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2487779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traincar/pseuds/traincar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur doesn't know what they have, but it tastes like grief. Eames finds out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Far Out to Sea and Alone

**Author's Note:**

> “She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”  
> \- Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

Arthur’s mother is buried in Massachusetts.  
This is why he always goes stateside.

*

She was too young forty-six.

*

She is driving. She is laughing. She is brushing back her hair (dark, like his) and laughing, because Arthur has said something witty and you could light up the whole world with charm like that and then they crash, just like that.

“Just like that,” Arthur tells the officer.

There is a gash above his temple. He has broken his arm. He is going to leave the hospital and go home (not home, but somewhere) and he will be okay.

His mother (she is brushing back her hair and laughing) is lying immobile with a set of crushed ribs and a still heart.

This is why he always goes stateside.

*

“I heard about your mother,” Mal says. She barely knows him. She is Dom’s wife, and she is beautiful, and she reminds him so much of his own mother that it’s difficult for him to be around her.

She folds her hand over his, warm, spider-like fingers, nails painted cherry red. “Grief is a terrible friend, Arthur,” she whispers.

He doesn’t understand just yet, but Mal leans over and whispers something delicate and French in his ear so he nods.

He dreams of Paris.

His mother doesn’t dream at all.

*

“Bonjour, Mama,” is the first thing he says to her after meeting the Cobbs.

*

And then there is Eames.

For a while, Arthur shares nothing at all of him.

*

“He is excellent at what he does,” Dom tells him.

“I have faith that you always choose the best,” Arthur says, though the forger is no one he can see himself talking to for fun. Absolutely not, especially because that stupid accent of his really pisses him off.

“He is the best,” Mal assures. “He is handsome, too,” she glances over her shoulder, hair (dark, like his) in her eyes, and Mal knows everything so she must be right. It isn’t at all because Arthur feels the same way. Not at all.

*

His mother has been buried for five years, making friends with worms and dirt.

“I don’t think I like him,” Arthur says. He is speaking to a slab of rock. There’s nothing there, just granite with Elizabeth etched into the front. No one is going to respond, and he knows that, but he talks anyway.

Mal is right. Grief is the worst friend he’s ever had.

*

Eames, turns out, is the best at a lot of things, particularly kissing.

Not that Arthur would know.

*

“I’m starting to like him, I think. A little, maybe.” This is non-conclusive. It isn’t a good enough thing to say. He didn’t drive all the way here to be indecisive. “I don’t know a lot about what’s going on here, but I like it.” And that sounds good enough for him.

He can taste Eames on his lips, even hours later, and his mother says absolutely nothing but he feels good telling her.

*

Mal is drinking tea. Her legs are crossed. She brushes back her hair (dark, like his), and laughs, because Arthur has said something witty and, just like that, he feels like a boy again.

*

Eames is more than a good kisser.

“Darling, I think you’re an uptight fool, and I’m really not sure why this is, but I would very much like to have my way with you.”

“Okay,” Arthur says, Eames’s lips against his stomach, dragging downwards, leaving a trail of moisture. “Just like that,” Eames whispers, and Arthur shivers.

*

“Do you love him?” Mal asks. She looks up from her papers, stomach huge.

Arthur frowns. “We don’t even know each other.” And it’s true. He and Eames contribute nothing to any sort of relationship except sex. How can something like that be love?

“You can love someone without knowing them,” Mal says, glancing down at her stomach. “I don’t know James.”

*

“I think I love him,” Arthur tells his mother. “I don’t know how that works, but that’s what Mal was implying, and I guess it’s sort of true if I look past how annoying he can be.”

He thinks, staring at the slab of granite that is his mother, and sits down, fingers pushing at the dewy grass. “I get Eames his coffee every morning. I always make it the wrong way, just to piss him off, but he drinks it anyway. I think that’s as close to love as you can get.”

*

In a matter of months, James is born, the stranger that Mal loved, her petit prince.

James knows nothing of his mother, just lets her hold him because it’s all he knows. Dom puts him down for a nap some months later (maybe a year, Arthur cannot keep track of time) and he and Mal go under.

James will wake up from his nap silently, and he will still know nothing of his mother who, in the span of a handful of hours, has gone irreversibly mad.

This, Arthur thinks, is why grief is a terrible friend.

Cobb calls hours later and Arthur imagines the outline of Mal’s beautiful face, crushed against the sidewalk, lips pink from wine and where Cobb last kissed her.

*

Eames comes to see him.

It is Arthur’s job to care for the children in Cobb’s absence. He does this because he has to.

But Arthur is quiet, so quiet, and Eames leans towards him and whispers darling, darling and Arthur’s breath hitches. He looks down at his lap, twists his hands together delicately (his fingers are shaking) and finally stands, rights himself. Eames whispers again, a shh shh shh of apologies. Darling. Love, I’m sorry. Arthur pauses, breathes because he’d forgotten to and how do you forget a thing like that?

*

He and Eames sit with James and Philippa for hours, both too young to understand what’s happened. When Arthur opens his mouth to breathe, all he can taste is grief, and Philippa is tugging at his sleeve and asking Arthur, what’s wrong? Can we play outside? and he’ll do anything to get out of this awful house so he nods.

He will end up seeing the same thing Cobb will one day, both children digging outside for worms while Arthur digs inside himself for guilt and grief.

*

Arthur says nothing more than, “Mal is dead.”

*

What’s left of Mal is burned, ashes gathered together in a small urn. He and Cobb spend an entire month covering the latter’s footsteps (“They blame me, Arthur. I didn’t push her, but I killed her.”) and bringing Mal home. They spread out her ashes in Paris, Milan, the tip of Greece, the pond by her childhood home. Each time they scatter a piece of her, Cobb cries.

Cobb cries a lot now, but always when he thinks he is out of Arthur’s sight. Traveling with the best Point Man in the world, he never is.

*

“I think that was the closest I ever got to a vacation,” Arthur admits to his mother. It’s chilly, the ache of winter seeping into his bones. “I still can’t believe she’s dead. I don’t want her to be gone. I wish Eames were here. I don’t even know why. I keep saying I don’t even really like him that much, but I wish he were here, Mama.”

His mother’s final resting place is empty. It is a small lot of grass behind an old church and nobody else is here. Arthur’s knees are pressed into the snowy ground, mud and water staining his pants and he doesn’t mind in the least.

He thinks about how Mal died, how she knew she was falling, dropping through the sky and even if she changed her mind, she could never go back. He squeezes his eyes shut, breath hitching, and imagines her smiling up at him from her desk, brushing back her hair (dark, like his) and laughing, and Arthur sobs.

This is the first time he cries over Mal.

It is also the last.

*

Arthur disappears for a while. He stays close to Cobb, just to keep an eye on things, and only goes back when he’s ready. For seven months, he isn’t.

It isn’t until the Fischer job that he sees Eames again.

He stays with the forger for the first three nights of planning, and Eames digs his fingers into Arthur’s hips hard enough to bruise.

“I don’t know a thing of commitment,” Eames whispers. “I don’t even know what we’re doing, but whatever it is, I want it to be with you.”

Arthur jerks, head tipping back against the sheets and Eames slides his hand under the waistband of his pants. “Me too,” Arthur mumbles.

He means it.

*

“I think we’re going to be okay,” Arthur says, sitting cross-legged in front of his mother. “I can’t be certain. Of anything, really, but especially Eames. I just hope we’ll be okay, that’s all.”

*

He is combing back his hair (dark, like her’s) and laughing, because Eames has said something witty and the forger will remember this moment for a lifetime, just like that.

*

“I know I said I don’t know a thing of commitment,” Eames says, “but if you aren’t just with me, let me know.” He sits down at the foot of the bed, Arthur pulling on his shirt, sweater.

“I don’t know what you’re—“

“You do, love. You make the same trip at least every other week. Long drive, too, so I suspect it’s someone special. I’ve done it too, the casual thing. So if this isn’t working for you—“

“You bastard.” Arthur shakes his head (Eames is fucking unbelievable) and finishes getting dressed, straightening his tie to perfection and grabbing his things. “Next time you make the attempt to tail me, make sure you tail me the whole way, Mr. Eames.”

*

He does.

Arthur is kneeling in the dirt, grass claimed by winter, running through a silent mantra of things to tell his mother. “I don’t know if this will work,” he admits. “I don’t think I should even bother if I—“

But he stops. And Eames sits next to him, just like that, shoulder pressed against his and Arthur has no idea how he got here, why he bothered.

He sets a lily in front of the slab of rock, Elizabeth, darling, I’m Eames, and shakes his head. “I’m a fool,” he says.

“You are.”

Arthur looks ahead, debating ignoring the hand Eames has on his back. But then the forger pulls Arthur in to his side, tilting his face up, leaning in, and Arthur just breathes.

“She’s dead,” he tells him.

“I know, darling, it’s all right.” Eames leans in closer, their noses touching and he watches Arthur’s lashes flutter, sees that watery slant of his eyes and chooses not to comment on it.

“I think she would like you,” Arthur whispers. “She wanted me to be happy.”

Eames reaches over and fingers the lily as if he could somehow make it rest just so, perfect and pure against the E of her name. “Are you?”

Arthur’s breath hitches, Eames’s fingers marking a new path against one cheek, his jaw, lips following suit and yes, I’m happy.

And this is why he always goes stateside.

fin.


End file.
